


I'm In Here

by icyvanity



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Ghosts, M/M, Paranormal, Post-Canon, Post-The Raven King, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-21 23:22:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7409254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icyvanity/pseuds/icyvanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The quest for Glendower has been completed, but there are more out in the world, waiting for the king and his court to find them. Though it spans across states, across timezones, across continents—their newest adventure will bring the spirits of Henrietta with them. The dead have been forgotten, and Henry Cheng is the only one who can hear them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm In Here

Salem, Massachusetts was stormier than Henry had expected, especially considering the warmth of the fall day. Given, it was no Henrietta or Vancouver—where he’d spent the majority of his time before the trek around the country with Blue and Gansey—so he shouldn’t have expected anything of it. After all, if there was any supernaturally charged place in the continental United States, Salem was _it_.

The aforementioned couple was currently in the middle of picking out atrociously colored raincoats to combat the weather. Gansey had already tried on lilac, neon orange, and puce. He stood in front of the mirror in a bright blue jacket, patting himself down and puffing out his chest as Blue laughed at him.

Henry preferred souvenirs to rain-survival gear. He liked having proof that he was out in the world, _living_. He needed the proof that they had all survived those few days where everything almost went to hell, that they had all come out of it unscathed. He’d already picked out a postcard for his mother and one for himself as well; he was a collector of all sorts of strange objects, you see—fun things that caught his eye, not the meaningful trinkets Gansey collected from every corner of the world. Henry was a fan of the sorts of obscure objects one could find in a gas station—mugs and t-shirts and—

“Snow globes,” said a voice in his ear. Henry froze. He knew he was alone in the aisle, but he glanced behind him to ensure that he was; there was no one else in the aisle, save for an elderly man at the other end perusing the jerky selection.

Henry cleared his throat. “Snow globe, eh?” he asked quietly. He felt a cold breeze flit past him—one that the steaming rains outside would never permit.

“I always liked the glitter,” the voice said suddenly. For a moment, Henry could’ve sworn he saw a face reflected in the glass of the solitary snow globe left on the shelf—a young one, not much older than his own—but it was gone by the time he blinked. He set down the one in his hands and picked it up. Shakig it, he realized that the glitter was not only multi-colored and fluorescent, but that there were tiny golden bees floating above a replica of the town.

Henry knew that Gansey didn’t believe in coincidences, and he believed in Gansey.

“Thank you,” Henry said. He saw a smile—awkward with disuse, but a smile all the same—appear for a moment in the reflection on the glass. There was a sense of a finality with it that left Henry feeling disappointed. He didn’t understand who spoke to him, and he’d experienced enough strange occurrences in the past year to leave him wary of the unknown. But, he was on an adventure, after all. He left the aisle with the snow globe in his hand and presented it to Gansey and Blue.

“For the Barns, I thought.”

Blue froze, with her hands in the air and her mouth gaping. Gansey only faltered for a moment, recovering far before Blue did. He took the snow globe from Henry’s hands and turned it over in his own.

He chuckled at the bees. “Jane,” he said quietly, “would you look at that?”

Blue’s eyes had been staring—not seeing—at Henry’s empty palm, but she looked over at the sound of Gansey’s voice. Henry realized that maybe he had been wrong; none of them had made it out of that day the same as they had been before, but perhaps Blue’s injury went deeper than a scar.

“Funny,” Blue said in a humorless, detached voice. Henry had been interested in the voce, but all he felt toward it now was disdain; anyone who could make Blue Sargent look and sound like that was someone Henry wanted to stay very far away from.

“Let’s buy it,” Gansey decided, letting a smile take over his features, and pivoted Blue toward the register. “Thank you, Henry.”

Later, in the back of the rumbling Camaro—which defied all reason, as it still lacked an engine—Henry sat alone in the backseat with the snow globe clutched in his hand. He attempted to clean the glass with the end of his soaked shirt, but found himself wishing he had gotten a raincoat for himself; he couldn’t do much to it to be able to see the town they were driving through better.

There was no face looking back at him, no words in his ears. Henry stared at the glass for a moment, before leaning forward and breathing onto the glass.

_Forgotten_

The word wrote itself out, once and then again and again until Henry was left with a clear, but dry, snow globe in his hands, and too many questions on his mind.


End file.
